In your hands

Check this out.

Beautiful world

Isn't the world a beautiful place.
These have got to be the most visually stimulating part of our evening meal tonight.
Perhaps fate is telling me to add green to my jelly fish.

Jelly fish sucks onto ceramic saucer

Look what happens when a jelly fish wraps its tentacles around a saucer.
The 'ink' of the 'jelly fish' leaves dendritic 'poison' marks in the glaze.
Rather like the bruising one gets when a jelly fish wraps its tentacles around a pregnant womans leg... but we wont go into that now.
And just because the colours look nice together here are some purple potatoes.

Creature 1

I had a spell of making creatures in 2006- they were my version of dolls... but deep sea dolls, strangely enough, because now I find myself researching if Paverpol would be any good at improving the rigidity of this creature so that it can stand up! And Paverpol is most frequently used to give durability and rigidity to outdoor doll-like sculptures.

I know this looks very similar to things I have done before... it is.. the difference is that it is about 600% bigger and now I want to make a scary well-stitched installation of these - a veritable forest of these... standing on their heads by the way - feet up... keep you posted.

Larissa's ATC

Thanks to Larissa McLean - art teacher at Jack James High School for this lovely ATC.
Aliya and I decided that it is a wonderful look into a rock pool of the imagination.

Since I want to share with Larissa I kept going with the bits and pieces I had put together for the seminar and used them to create a fabric, and from this, some abstract works.

Seminar At Jack James High School

Some of the Grade 12 Students (names withheld to protect their privacy - but they are great students) show pride in their work, and below Larissa (see next post) at work too.



Last week I took a couple of files of samples (work developed after a long association with Sian Martin ) over to Jack James High School in NE calgary to do a show and tell and hands on seminar with the Grade 12 Sewing Course students.
The morning went very well with the students well-prepared by their teacher Amanda Elia. By the end of the class (8am-12noon) the students were well into it, having produced some lovely samples using burning tools they had made out of wire, soldering irons and hobby wood-burning tools.
It was a great experience for me to be with these kids and I do hope they take the work further, as they were discussing, using the technique for panels on bags.
I also showed one or two pieces of shibori and sure enough one of the students latched onto that, seeing its potential in one of her outfits (a dress in polka dot fabric), which could be brightened up with a shibori belt. Good for her! I know that shibori is a very exciting method and would provide a lovely theme to another seminar.
Please contact me via email for details of seminars and workshops ioftheneedle@me.com

Doodle-on

I have been convinced by others that my doodles are pleasing and stimulating to look at, so I am going to take them more seriously. I carry my doodling equipment around with me at all times so that the creative juices can find an outlet even whilst on motherly duty - waiting for ballet lessons to finish etc. and I have to admit it is fun. They might be useful as images for digital printing and manipulating and, who knows, they could turn into stitch one day.

Calgary visit and watercolour

Window dressed at Holt Renfrew - note the beads as grains of ?sand in the geological layering juxtaposed with the fossils.
This week I missed a lecture by Judy Chicago at the Glenbow - if anyone was there please tell me a little about what went on... I also missed a one hour lecture by the Dalai Lama at the Saddledome and that seems as unreal to me as it probably does to you...

However the Calgary Art Gallery has an exhibition of work by many embroiderers and textile artists, they have worked designs by Judy Chicago, on the theme of Birth. So if you want to see excellently executed works, they are there. The accompanying films are very interesting, especially the one about her 8 year research and art works on The Holocaust. And "The Fall" a tapestry weaving from that collection is on show and worth the entrance fee in itself.

I will go back - the show is on till January - to view the birth-works in more detail, but they are quite enlightening and frequently disturbing in content.

I continue my interest in the abstract and have uploaded a watercolour just created and now drying before more detail is added.